Looking for Early Victories, Sanders Lost Chance to Expand Base

[brooklynite]

Bloomberg:

Bernie Sanders’ senior advisers were still in Las Vegas the day after the Nevada caucuses when they convened a conference call to plot their path ahead.

Over the previous 10 months, they had focused establishing Sanders as a credible challenger to Hillary Clinton, the overwhelming early favorite in the race. Sanders was drawing thousands of enthusiastic supporters to rallies. As his populist message resonated among restive voters eager for change, he turned a 50-point gap in the polls in Iowa into a narrow loss in the caucuses. Eight days later, he followed up with a come-from-behind landslide win in the New Hampshire primary.

But after the Feb. 20 loss in Nevada, the third contest in the race, Sanders’ team concluded they needed some definitive, and sure, wins. That meant ceding the Southern states that dominated the next round of contests to Clinton and focusing on five primaries and caucuses in states where minority voters wouldn't be as much of a factor.

“The alternative was to spread the resources over more states, like Texas and Tennessee and Georgia and try to accumulate as many delegates as possible,” Tad Devine, one of the advisers who took part in the strategy session, said in an interview. “If we did that we had a very good chance of maybe winning only Vermont, and maybe one other state, but we would not be able to sustain the campaign and we would not be able to relaunch it.”

That early decision set up a dynamic that would haunt the campaign for the rest of the race. While Sanders’ success with white liberals, independents, and young voters led to huge crowds and a flood of small-dollar donations, he would never overcome his crippling deficit with black and Hispanic voters and long-time Democrats. Momentum wasn't a substitute for votes and delegates.

[msongs]

1. last night sanders rejected unity. he had a choice to accept and acknowledge reality and dodged. nt

[Surya Gayatri]

2. End of story: "Momentum wasn't a substitute for votes and delegates."

[Blue_Tires]

3. He still could have siphoned off a bunch of black voters early on

if he didn't have such a hard-on about running against a very popular Obama...

(Of course I warned everyone here repeatedly at the time, and we see how much that did...)

[Lord Magus]

6. Calling for "political revolution" played well with his core supporters.

So it seems he just ignored the fact that it played very poorly with those who support the popular Democratic president.

[MrTriumph]

4. Sen. Sanders ran a great race.

And he's putting FDR, HST, JFK and LBJ's ideas forward.

[Squinch]

8. He did not. His ideas were good, but his race was fatally flawed, early and often. Those he

was losing when those flaws first surfaced told him, clearly and repeatedly, that he had a problem with them.

The groups he was losing in large numbers were people of color and women, who he couldn't afford to lose. He ignored what those constituents said to him about the flaws in his approach to them, or told them they were wrong about their feelings about the way he was approaching them.

At least that lesson ought to be learned and acknowledged.

[Demsrule86]

5. It is one of life's great ironies.

Senator Sanders ran like a Republican...ignoring and acting in a condescending manner towards minority voters.

[geek tragedy]

7. it's easy to see why he fell short, but for all the missteps he still massively overachieved.

strategically, their biggest error was .... not having a plan to win.

he would have been better served without two whitebread states going first--would have forced him to go outside his comfort zone and figure out how to appeal to the entire party